ConeStop: New trick to stop rats and mice

A new innovation from Rentokil builds on an old idea but plugs an important gap in protecting businesses from rodents.

The ConeStop is an adaptable plastic cone that effectively blocks rats and mice from running along pipes and cables.

Threat to businesses

Rats and mice are agile climbers and intelligent enough to find any kind of weakness to get into and around buildings when looking for shelter and food. Their agility has caused problems for centuries, from eating and contaminating large amounts of stored food to finding their way onto ships and spreading diseases that killed millions of people.

Although the threat of the plague has been reduced to occasional cases or small outbreaks (it is treatable with antibiotics if given quickly), rats and mice still cause significant losses to businesses handling food and are carriers of many other diseases that are a greater health threat in modern times.

A Rentokil study collating data from 51,000 customer sites found up to 40% of businesses handling food reported pest incidents and 52% of these were caused by rodents.

Rodent control is an essential component of food safety practices, and a legal requirement, therefore businesses need to implement effective measures to comply with the legislation and prevent financial and reputational loss.

The ConeStop provides one more weapon in the fight to prevent rodents accessing and contaminating sensitive areas in business premises.

3D highway

Modern buildings and even ships provide complex three-dimensional highways for rodents to run along to seek food and find places for shelter. Electricity and communications cables, pipes and ducting provide ready-made routes for rodents to get around buildings.

The internal structure of factories provides 3D highways for agile rodents to run around safely

Rats and mice also need to gnaw constantly to wear down their teeth, which don’t stop growing. Soft materials such as the plastic covering of electric cables are common targets for their gnawing, but when they reach the copper inside, the exposed wires can short resulting in fires. Preventing rodents from accessing cables is, therefore, also an important fire safety measure.

Old cone-cept

The idea of using a disc or cone-shaped object to stop rats and mice from accessing food stored in buildings is not new. In fact, it goes back hundreds of years: mushroom-shaped stone posts, called staddle stones (or steddle stones) were used as foundations for granaries in England and Spain from at least the 18th century many of these buildings still survive.

Disc or cone shaped rat guards have also been used on ships for many decades, to stop rats and mice running along mooring ropes into the ships. They were not widely used, however, until the early twentieth century.

After the bubonic plague was introduced into West Coast ports of the US, some of the ports introduced their own requirements for ships entering port. Though it wasn’t until 1951 that pest control on ships became a requirement under international law when the WHO introduced the International Sanitary Regulations that required ships to have Deratting Certificates.

New trick: ConeStop

Rentokil has now adapted the simple rigid cone into a product that can easily be adapted to fit a wide variety of pipes, cables and even rectangular ducting.

ConeStop is a circular piece of flat plastic with a V-shaped piece removed so that when the two edges are tied together it forms a cone. It has flexible fingers in the centre that, when the cone is wrapped around pipes or cables, bend to adapt to the diameter and leave no gaps.

Successful rat protection

Rentokil customers in six countries have tested ConeStop on their premises. They reported that it successfully stopped rats from travelling along pipework and cables and that the cones were not gnawed at.

ConeStop has now been granted two European Registered Community Designs, one for the full cone, for suspended pipes, cables and posts, and the second for a half cone, which is for cables and pipes attached to flat surfaces.

Robert Shand, Pest Control Project Technologist at Rentokil’s Global Technical Centre said, “We are extremely pleased with the outcome of the customer trials. For such a simple design it will have a great impact into keeping both rats and mice contained and preventing them from accessing other parts of customer premises.”

Harry Wood

I am a Technical Content Specialist at Rentokil Initial, writing long-form content for the company websites. I have been an editor and writer for around 30 years, originally in an academic environment covering tropical forestry, environment and rural development issues, before migrating into magazine publishing covering IT and healthcare, then medical technology, and finally entering the world of pests and hygiene at Rentokil Initial in 2015 â€” returning to my roots when writing about wood-boring insect pests ... or is that boring Wood writing about insect pests?

I own a small condo unit in a building of 8 condos in Tacoma, WA. We have a rat problem. After 6 weeks of professional exclusion and trapping, activity has been greatly reduced with some unit owners reporting no activity while others reporting some. All known exclusion points have been covered with wire and gaps filled with razor wire and glue. All trees have been trimmed (severely) to at least 3-4 feet from the building and below the roofline. The roof is flat. I suspect — due to living in a city with power lines — that rats might be accessing the building via the wires. A friend mentioned hearing of a type of cone used to keep rodents from accessing buildings via power lines. A quick search turned up your article about a similar type of cone. Would this type of cone work? Are there other, smaller cones designed for electrical wires stretched between power poles and buildings? Who would I contact to install this type of cone if it exists and is affordable?

Thanks for your help. Please feel free to respond to my email address when you have time.

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Rentokil Initial plc employs 38,000 people in over 66 countries offering the strengths and experience of a multi-national organisation, whilst retaining the agility and characteristics of a local company.